Dallas, Texas 10/07/2013 (Financialstrend) – On September 28 Ariad Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARIA) made positive news headlines on the side lines of European Cancer Congress. This was related to positive results from its ongoing Phase 1 and 2 trails of its “investigational drug tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) AP26113”. The target drug was tested on patients suffering from “advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)” from an ongoing trial. These trail results indicated strong “anti-tumour activity” induced by AP26113 in patients suffering from “TKI-naïve and crizotinib-resistant anaplastic lymphoma kinase positive (ALK+)”. The subject patients in this trail also included those suffering from brain metastases and are being treated by administering the drug “crizotinib’. Crizotinib is a “first-generation” ALK suppression agent.
The phase 1 of this trail was designed to determine the safety and tolerability aspects of the target drug AP26113. Based on the results, ARIA will determine the recommended dose to be used in the future trails of this drug. The second phase involved testing out effectiveness of five expansion cohorts of the target drug. 26 patients spread across Europe and North America were part of this testing.
The lead presenter of test results for AP26113 D. Ross Camidge is quoted to have said “The updated results continue to record anti-tumor activity in patients with TKI-naïve and crizotinib-resistant ALK-positive NSCLC.”
In spite of the positive outcome of the trial the stock has been under pressure at the markets. It has lost close to 9.4% of its value over the past 30 days. It just about managed to end in the green during trading last week by recording a 0.59% increase in value. At current valuations, the share price is down 25% from its 52 week high valuations and is down 22% from its 52 week low pricing. It has a market cap of $3.4 billion with net loss amounting to $247.3 million.